Elementary schools embrace reading at home as they downplay homework assignments

Studies suggest younger students benefit more from reading than they do from traditional homework assignments.
Green Bay Press-Gazette

Emma Williquette works on finding the right method to get the light of her science project working during class Nov. 19 at Forest Glen Elementary School in Suamico.(Photo: Jim Matthews/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wis)

GREEN BAY - After just 20 minutes of reading each night, Trinity Ruatti is finished with the only after-school task assigned by her fifth-grade teacher at Sunnyside Elementary.

Like her teacher in Pulaski, elementary-school teachers across the country are opting to encourage more reading and to create more family time, recognizing both have more value for young students and their families than does sweating over worksheets or solving math problems.

Encouraging reading as opposed to assigning homework has been the norm at Sunnyside throughout the 11 years that Marc Klawiter has been the school's principal.

There is no set policy on homework but the school follows best practices on the subject, he said. Reading promotes academic growth which is why so many educators ask families or students to read each night.

“We suggest the 20 minutes of reading a night or we might suggest looking over some math,” Klawiter said in place of other types of homework.

Trinity's mother, Amber Ruatti, said the idea of no homework was a significant change when the family moved to Pulaski from the Green Bay School District, where reading and math homework was the norm.

Teacher Megan Zavernik works with student Megan Christnovich on a science project on electricity during class Nov. 19 at Forest Glen Elementary School in Suamico.(Photo: Jim Matthews/USA TODAY NETWORK-W)

“After school is nice because she is in sports and we are not focused on having to do homework before or after sports and Girl Scouts,” Ruatti said.

The move to minimize homework has slowly been gaining traction as a growing body of research shows homework does not benefit elementary-school students. Proponents recognize the new approach can be a tough sell to parents who grew up with daily homework assignments.

“The thing about school in general is that every parent, teacher, school board member, etc., has had 12 years of socialization of what they think school should be,” said Denise Pope, a senior lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Education.

Pope is co-founder of Challenge Success, a non-profit that advocates for "research-based strategies that promote student well-being and engagement with learning." That includes reduced homework assignments.

Trying to change their perception of homework being beneficial is a slow process.

“So to say that this thing we’ve been doing for years and years and years and years has really, very little academic merit, particularly in the early years, that’s a big shift. That’s like, you know saying, Pluto’s not a planet,” Pope said.

The good homework

The Winneconne School District asked its school board three years ago for its blessing to replace homework for elementary students with 20 minutes of reading.

"I am not aware of parents specifically asking for the change, but each year we had heard complaints regarding too much homework or homework causing stress at home," Superintendent Peggy Larson said.

Mainly, the change was driven by research indicating homework does not benefit elementary students.

“I think if we went back to homework now it would be shocking to families,” Larson said.

It was a post on social media that caused a Howard-Suamico School District elementary teacher to rethink her views on homework.

Erica Kentop, a fourth-grade teacher in the Howard-Suamico School District, changed her approach after reading an online post about three years ago about why a teacher was no longer giving homework. The author's points included it is better if students can work directly with their teachers, according to research students that need extra homework are struggling at home to complete it and doing the work at school kept students from learning bad habits.

“Everything that she was saying was kind of spot on,” Kentop said.

This has shaped how Kentop and Megan Zavernik, with whom she team teaches, handle assignments in the classes they share at Forest Glen Elementary School.

Each teacher makes sure students have time during the day to work on assignments, get needed help and time at the end of the day to finish additional work.

We try to make sure that any work that is expected of them can be done during the school day — that we give them enough time to work on it because we always think that we are the experts, we are the resources, so if they are stuck on something it is better to have us to be around to help them get through it versus sending it home and having the struggle at night with families being busy,” Zavernik said.

However, students are required to take home any work that is not finished during the school day, the teachers said.

“No one really gives the busy work at this point,” Zavernik said.

Reading as a foundation

The purpose of the nightly reading sessions is to promote a love of learning and not to make reading a chore, teacher's said.

“I think that reading is a skill that is needed no matter where you go in your life … we don’t even look at it like homework,” Zavernik said.

Some schools even shy away from even calling the 20 minutes of reading homework, and many don't track whether students and families are following through.

“We have to trust families that they are (reading),” Larson said.

Zavernik and Kentop don't check to see if students actually are spending time reading, but they said it becomes apparent if a student has not been taking time to read at night.

During parent-teacher conferences last month, they reiterated to parents the importance of reading nightly.

"It seems weird for the schools to say that they are assigning something that should be done for pleasure. That you should choose and want to do," she said. "Yet, the reality is, particularly with social media and technology these day, reading really is going down."

Common questions

Ruatti said the lack of homework was OK for the first couple of years, but she expected that to have changed now that Trinity is in fifth grade.

She worries that her daughter won't be adequately prepared the homework load that will arrive in middle and high school.

Another parent, Michelle Olejniczak, said she struggles with not knowing what her children are learning in school because they are not sitting down and going over her daily work each night. Allisyn is a fifth-grade student at Hemlock Creek Elementary in the West De Pere School District.

She wishes Allisyn’s teacher would assign some homework even if it was not due for a week. Allisyn, like others, does the suggested 20 minutes of reading each night.

Ruatti and Olejniczak’s responses to limited or no homework are very common, said Pope.

“Parents look at homework as a window into what the kid is doing in school and if you don’t send homework home (you think) the kid does nothing in school.” Pope said.

Yet, homework can often be a source of stress between a child and the parent.

“We try to say ‘hey parents, this is a great thing! You are officially off the hook. You are not the homework police. You are not the homework grader. You are somebody who makes sure your kid is reading and engaged and excited about what they are learning in school,’” Pope said.

Experts are not able to say “why” elementary student do not benefit from homework, she said. At the same time, there also is no data that shows that homework helps students with organizational or study skills.

Research by Challenge Success shows that students do not suffer academically from not receiving homework when they reach middle and high school, she said.

“It’s actually the kids are more prepared because what happens when you are doing homework that is meaningful to you is you are more engaged and it is more likely to stick and ...you don’t do something developmentally inappropriate in an earlier year just to prepare someone for something that's going to happen when they are able to do it," Pope said.